Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1887-02-04
ELLICE GRAY.
By BETH DAY.

By BETH DAY.
The door of the country school-room
closed behind the last noisy pupil. and the
young teacher was alone. SIZE bowed her
head YEARLY upon her hand. and looked
around the bare, comfortiessroom, with its
hard benches, curtainiess windows, and
rusty, broken stove, with shudder of dis
gust.
There were days-and this had been one
when every fiber of her sensitive being
shrank from association with the motley
crowd of urchins, and from contact with
the dirty, dog's-eared books, the, grimy
desks. and dingy walls; but she never al
lowed these feelings 10 influence her; the
duties of her position we're conscientiously
performed, the more SO. perhaps, because
they we're SO disagreeable.
She had dismissed school an hour earlier
to-day, ostensibly to enable her to correct
the compositions handed in for TO- morrow's
reading; really because she had seen Roy
Carlton drive by, and knew that he would
return to ask her company for an hours
drive behind his handsome bays; and she
had told herself that she would-because
she must-refuse, hencefcrth aud forever.
ell things that he might ask of her; and
she wished to have little time to strengthen
herself, to "havesher dark hour unseen,
before she should shut the gate forever
between that world Of ease and happiness,
and, more that all else. of Roy's love, and
her world of poverty. LONELINESS, and sor-
row.
She could not help but love him. he had
laid SO many drifts Of sunshine across her
otherwise shadcwed pathway. had been
such a rock of refuge in her desert of
friendlessness, since she came, over year
ago. to this dreary little village to earn her
living by teaching.
She had chosen this vocation. not be-
cause she liked it, for she did not, but be-
cause she felt that she was prepared for it,
and there seemed 10 be no place for her
elsewhere in the ranks of workers.
She was not fitted to do battle with the
grim fiend of poverty: she had. until two
years before, "fed on the roses, and lain in
the lilies Of lfe." TLen came the death of
her father, followed almost immediately by
that of her mother, and she was left I'M
prepared to face the world alone.
Her fathers wealth, which she always
supposed from their style of living to be
ample. faded away before the demands of
his creditors like snow in the springtime.
Her high sense Of honor would not allow
her to hold back even The old homestead
and household furniture. sodear from the
associations clustering around it, and re-
serving but one or two articles, she allowed
the rest. even her piano. to be sold.
Her summer friends drifted away one by
one, and she noted their departure with
scarcely sigh over their detection. Was
it because she realized of how little worth
was their evanescent friendship? or had
her heart, suffering deeper wound, be-
come dead to the smarting of these lesser
hurts?
Harry Vance had been her ideal Of a
gentleman. She had cherished for him
strong friendship, which, before her fathers
aeel.ih, had hidden fair TO ripen into love;
his attentions had been very lover-like,
and this small world in which the two
moved had already, in imagination, coupled
their names together, when the clouds of
misfortune shrouded her; and he, with
some trite sentences of coincidence upon
his tongue, had stepped nimbly out of their
shadow, probably congratulating himself
that he had not gone SO far but what it was
still easy to recedc.
She sighed, not for him, but for her
shattered ideal, when she saw that he
fortune, and sought by a vigorous court
ship 10 obtain her hand in marriage, and
possession of the property he knew she
held in her own right, md in that sigh OK
hailed the last lingering perfume OF the
friendship Ellice Gray had felt, not for
Harry Vance, but for the man she had
imagined him to be; and in its place grew
loathing and contempt for Harry Vance,
the fortune hunter, intensified an hundred
fold when, later, she heard of the debts
and duns that harasscd his pathway. For,
strictly upright and honorable herself, she
could tolerate no dishonesty in others. and
in her vocabulary theft and deb. without
means OF intention Of payment were syn
onymous terms.
"Many heart is caught in the rebound"
proved true in this case, for Ellice had
come TO this little village to lose the henrt
that had never really been in Harrys keep
ing. .--.
She knew Roy would ask her to be his
wife, and she had allowed herself to dream
of how happy she could be with him; with
what blessed sense Of rest and peace she
could creep into the shelter of his manly
arms and lay her head upon his loving
breast. But now the awakening had come,
and the Dream was over. She had loved